Bookish

I had a very bookish Friday and Saturday. All the worrying about my lost sick note (which arrived at work on Monday morning, as I found out when I took my replacement one in) had got to me and I just didn't want to do ANYTHING.

So I cosied up on the sofa to read, and basically didn't stop until Saturday night. I had myself a fantasy kick to get my mind well away from the here-and-now.

I'd picked up The Song of the Lioness Quartet by Tamora Pierce a few weeks ago and had started to reread it but got distracted by life. This time I read the whole damn thing on Friday afternoon (this edition is the 4 books in one) and then wanted more. So of course I went on and read the Immortals Quartet and the Protector of the Small Quartet that follow on from it. (this Amazon list shows all the books in their lovely lovely covers (same illustrator as the Casson books that customer didn't think much of)).

That took me through to Saturday night (with a couple of breaks for sleeping, eating and asking Anthony just why there was a mantelpiece in my hall*) and has left me with a small dilemma. What can I read next?

Logically I would carry on with the rest of Tamora's books, but there are hitches... I have Trickster's Choice which is the next in the Tortall series, but not Trickster's Queen which has taken three years to come out over here (and despite the picture, the edition we had in at work (the day before I came off sick) does not have the same cover style!), let alone Terrier. Emily does have these, but will possibly not let me borrow them...
The same problem occurs if I try to read the Circle Books (again shown on that Amazon list above) as I don't have the newest one of those either! (Emily does...)

(Yes, I know, I am so very pedantic about reading books all in one fell swoop)

I am now thinking about either reading some Mercedes Lackey or David Eddings, both of whom have written great series's's's, but can't sum up the energy for them quite yet. Instead I have gone off at a tangent and picked up Highland Fling by Katie Fforde instead. Hot toddies, snow, Scotland and a dashingly annoying hero - yum.

*The mantelpiece is there because a friend of Alf's moved house on Saturday and didn't want it anymore. Anthony went to help, I woke up when he went out (and read for a bit) but was asleep when he stopped here before breakfast to drop the mantelpiece off. So I wandered downstairs about 5 minutes before he got home and got rather confused. Apparently it's going in the front room, but not before that interesting shade of green on it has been painted over!

(The spellchecker changed mantlepiece to mantelpiece but I like the first spelling and by now can't tell which it should be!)

Never judge a book by its cover

The other day I had a customer ask me for a few children's books that had won prizes.

The first one I thought of was Saffy's Angel (which won the Whitbread Children's Award). I enthused about it to the lady and she had a read of the back and decided to take it (and the first sequel, Indigo's Star). But she did say that she wouldn't have picked it up because the cover was so horrible. "It looks like one of those cheap trashy chick-lit girlie books, you know" - I didn't know. I LOVE all the Casson Family covers. All I could say was "I suppose it is a bit..." and then trail off. I wanted to finish that sentence with "...beautiful" but couldn't.




Then today I was putting some books out and spotted a copy of The Darling Buds of May with a completely hideous cover. If my parents had had these editions there's no way on earth I'd have read them! They have the editions with cartoony covers, like their copy of Animal Farm had - which is why I picked it off the shelf at age 9. 1984 didn't have such a nice cover, but I read that next because I'd enjoyed Animal Farm so much.

Covers can indeed make or break a book. There are certain types of cover that I wouldn't pick up in a million years, and I may possibly be missing some good books because of it. We actually have a display at work that I set up called "Books that make you go mmm..." It's not a display of porn, it's books with beautiful covers.

These are some beautiful books.